Self editing 4 fiction #4 ~ Point of View

The Truth about Grammar

Geoffrey K. Pullum

As many authors are aware, novel writing at
its best can sometimes require that one diverts from or circumvents the rules
laid out for us by the Grammar Police.

For as a writer, I may want to tell you
that my character ‘creaked open an heavy oak door’ (I bet you spotted ‘an heavy’
there); but ‘creaked open’ might upset a purist (it’s complicated, why). And perhaps a run-on sentence flows more smoothly in dialogue now and then. 'Each to their own', I say (tongue in cheek).

Anyway, this
article is really to introduce you to the highly regarded Geoffrey K Pullum, co-author of The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language (2002), which is an up-to-date, comprehensive descriptive grammar of English that you will not find to be copiously over-padded with nit-picking punctuation anecdotes (nor does it have a panda on the cover).Intuitive writers already know that it is more suitable (and intimate) to say: "The staff were very friendly" rather than apply the collective-term-singular rule and say "The staff was very friendly" and Mr. Pullum tells us why it is legal and apt to do so.

The fact is, the rules of grammar (and the differing styles of punctuation) are contradictory at best. The thesis G.K. Pullum
created (below) gives the reader a fascinating insight into the state of the art and
its unfortunate marriage to the education system.

The Truth about English Grammar:
Rarely Pure and Never Simple

Geoffrey K. Pullum

Linguistics and English Language,
University of Edinburgh gpullum@ling.ed.ac.uk

Abstract:

Two kinds of dogmatism afﬂict the
study of English grammar. They have more in common than is widely
realized. On one side we have tradition-bound fundamentalists who take the rules to be clear
and simple regulative principles laid down centuries ago by unquestionable authorities. On
the other, we have theoretical linguists, who correctly take grammatical principles as a
topic for discovery rather than stipulation but insist that the detail and complexity of
grammar must be explainable through the action and interaction of principles that
are universal, elegant, and biologically based. I believe both views are in error. Here I focus
mostly on the traditionalists. Their system of analysis, essentially unaltered for two
hundred years, is assumed in all dictionaries and almost all grammar textbooks today,
despite its grave defects. The deepest errors stem from a longstanding confusion of
category (word class) with function (grammatical or semantic relation). Attempts to deﬁne
category in terms of function yield a familiar story: nouns name things, verbs name actions,
adjectives name qualities, and so on. All of this is puerile confusion. And in the
case of adjectives and adverbs, new evidence reveals that the contrast cannot be reduced to
differences in function, because the complementarity view (adjectives modify nouns,
adverbs modify non-nouns) is not tenable.

My mother tongue (Afrikaans) is going through much worse, at the moment, because the "protectors" of said language are trying to push it into this glass cabinet where everyone can admire its purity and beauty.

Never mind that any language dies if it stops evolving. No matter how pretty it is.